“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I have explained somewhat earlier how the gestalt ego consciousness was formed, and to some degree explained its psychic composition, but there is much more to be said here. There is a steady and unwavering cooperation that exists, and it is the basis of your physical universe. You do not see this cooperation. Your senses are rather more equipped to notice difference and divergence than sameness; but nevertheless the cooperation of all conscious entities provides physical objects with whatever appearance of permanence they have.

As you know, so-called inert objects possess consciousness also, though in a more generalized and much less specific manner, in which to a large degree choice is denied to them. It should be apparent that psychic identity is no more dependent upon physical permanence, certainly when you consider that even a chair retains its form as a chair, even though it is actually not one thing or object, and that no atom or molecule remains the same within it.

Other fields do allow for greater complexity of psychic organization, and let me remind you again that such psychic organizations do not involve a blurring of individuality in some undefinable whole, as for example any drowning of consciousness in some gigantic, benign superconsciousness. This is not the point.

It must be apparent however that all energy is not materialized as it passes through your field. There are also psychic gestalts with intelligences that are not materialized on your physical plane, and with these you are not of course familiar.

Incidentally, in the same manner that psychological experience exists, and does not take up space, in this same manner do psychic gestalts of intelligence exist, more or less within your plane and yet not visible to your senses. They have some limited effect on your plane however, but this is part of another discussion.

Also, for reasons that I will for now withhold, the psychic patterns within your physical universe are not maintained, as you know, indefinitely. As far as I know, no gestalt of any kind remains the same. But psychic gestalts develop in terms of value fulfillment, and it is known at the first appearance of a physical pattern how long the particular to-be-built-up gestalt will be maintained.

A psychic gestalt is dependent upon matter, not for its identity but merely for its survival in the physical plane. Psychic gestalts or identities or individualities are for all practical purposes immortal. They may join other gestalts but they will never be less than they once were. Identity then is never broken down. Any apparent breaking down is never an actual fact, as the personality could be thought of as a breaking down of the entity; but this is not so. The personality did not exist as such before its creation by the entity, and once it becomes an identity, it retains that individuality.